Go, Go, Pony Rangers!

Click to get a bett6er view of the text balloons. Oh…and…OH SNAP! Mega-Pony!

I wanted to do a multi-panel page, but really didn’t want to do a horizontal composition. Obviously, you can see the result of that above.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about teamwork lately, and teamwork in education. There’s a whole lot of focus on team effort between students in the classroom, the concept of “collaborative learning.” In fact, there’s a whole lot of emphasis at the teacher level in so called “collaborative planning,” but as I get later into my career, I have to suggest that to a large degree that isn’t a thing that really happens. Most meetings of that sort that I have sat in are entirely to produce a kind of “work product” for administration, and afterward, the teachers go back to their classrooms and do often unrelated lesson plans. I’ve managed to plan effectively with one other English teacher at my grade level this year, and another uses some of the digital resources that I generate.

If teachers were Power Rangers, they would NEVER form the @#$%ing Mega-Zord. Impossible…they would need to work together, and agree. Hard to get more than one to do that.

Still…today’s art is positive. Very positive. You can tell, just by looking.

It’s the last month of school. We are in the Endgame, and at least at my end, as an individual, it’s all about getting the energy together for one last big push. The grades are pretty high, which is a good thing, and the fail rate is pretty low. What will carry through to the end of the line is a kind of energy, a sort of motivation, that has to come from ME, but trickles down through the class to the students.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about my old school, and about Darth as of late. In the last days there, after Darth had been removed, motivation was LOW. It was all we could do to control the students, much less teach anything. Teachers were leaving in waves, positions unfilled, and students were getting increasingly bizarre and often violent. That wasn’t ALL Darth’s fault…that free fall continued after he was removed, and in fact, continued after I finally left the sinking ship.

The worst part, though, was the element that could be put on US. As things got worse, motivation got lower, and the teachers couldn’t put together the energy, the motivation, to make those final pushes happen. Students suffered as a result…even the students that were seriously committed to learning something.

The Edu-Mountain is not nearly as committed to the model of teacher team work. As a result, the motivation for such a hard final push comes entirely from ME…it’s internal. It’s not unlike an athletic event. You don’t slow down right before the finish line, you actually work your hardest, because you can see the goal.

The ponies in the strip have always represented that kind of internal influence, that sort of motivation. Cap isn’t very expressive…like most Alien Americans, she is pretty stoic. The ponies in the strip have consistently been expressive for her, getting feelings of uncertainty, happiness, anger, sadness…all of them, more clearly across. They are also indicative of her internal reserve of emotional energy…more than once, in dire circumstances, she has called for “more ponies.”

Here…those Pony Rangers are upbeat. They are positive. They are motivated, and getting together their Pony Zords to make Mega-Pony…the best thing they have for the Final Push. You can see the Mega-Pony looming over the hinterlands of the Edu-Mountain, ready to help Cap out with the final challenges of the year.

It’s a heavy handed metaphor for my feelings at the beginning of this week.

I know that I said I’d discuss the events of Free Comic Book Day 2017, and I may get to that as content. Free Comic Book Day was dominated by “Secret Empire” and the various dramas related to it…so maybe I’ll just get to it in an upcoming Secret Empire post. Hard to say.